Speaking of comics, I just went through my Comic Book Design book (catalogued by the Department of Redundancy Department) and printed a section on character design. I'm going to cobble together some sort of lesson plan and teach a class. Sort of. I'll be teaching one person unless I announce class times and have signups.

My teaching experience is very, very limited, so this is sort of an experiment to see if i can do it at all. If I can, I may consider continuing my education and become a teacher.

My neighborhood has an after-school/summer study program, but so far attendance for it has been limited to one or two people. When it was started, no one really knew what to do with it, so I offered up my services as an art instructor. Nothing was set in stone, so I've been working on putting together a lesson plan and figuring out exactly what I want to teach.

A federal judge (appointed by Dubya) just ruled the death penalty in the state of CA to be unconstitutional. Huh.

That happens sometimes. The first three judges to strike down gay marriage bans were all appointed by Republicans (Bush Sr. and Nixon) I believe. That a judge appointed by Bush jr. did so is a bit more unexpected though. And especially given that it's the death penalty -- judges are defensive of civil rights but tend not to strike at the death penalty ever. So "huh" might be right.

And I wrote up a lesson plan and it's really damn scatterbrained. I'll get dinner, put on some noise, look it over, and see if I can tighten it up. What I copied from my book was most of the Character Creation chapter, so I'm going with that for the first lesson. Dug out my Writing for Comics with Peter David book for further information, and I'm going to discuss the role of a character in the story, why a villain should be one of the first characters created for a story, the usage of fan characters and established characters versus an entirely original set of characters and background, and basic character design.

Character visual design will then allow me to segue into drawing the head and figure.

@TrakNar, are you familiar with the works of Scott McCloud? He has a few really great books on developing comics. His first book especially, Understanding Comics, is a must-read for anyone who wants a deep perspective into just what makes a comic a comic.

I mean, here's an honest-to-goodness all-Western excuse for CGI Gundams, and they go for bad WWII-era infantry tactics without the least hint of combined-arms warfare?! I mean seriously, the march up the pass on "Planet P" had "Kasserine" written all over it.

For the record, it spawned a great—albeit short-lived—animated series in Roughnecks. Hunt it down and give it a watch if you haven't already. The animation aged about as well as War Planets and Beast Wars, but it's still enjoyable.